I would really appreciate if anybody out there with any experience on running RedHat 7.1/7.2 on any IBM or compatible mainframe hardware.
Also, any caveat, help, advise, programming tips, OS tips would be highly admired.

aoa
tip for u is to use 7.3 ..u must post ur machine configuration so that depending on that we can make u some suggestion
i had been using linux 7.1,7.3 on hp netservers... initially problem was to configure that X. i suggest u while installing linux chose to boot into text mode rather than graphical and later go to graphical by startx command..u can chage the run levels by editing the /etc/inittab file.
also install complete development kit ,kernel source...will will be used for later in programming.

thank you for your reply and advice. i wanted to ask you this: are hp netservers mainframe like? the thing is that in our company we run os/390 on amdahl (now fujitsu; 16 engines) in our mainframe environment. the amdahl architecture is like ibm s/390 g5/g6. fujitsu bought amdahl and now providing support. to save money and cut cost, we trashed the idea of buying ibm zSeries or s/390 machines, and now planning to try any versions of Linux (suSE, redhat, turbo, etc.) that can work on top of the existing h/w. v7.3, like you suggested, we can try, but i couldn't find the 7.3 for ibm/powerpc architecture. where would that be? on rh website? i only found the i386 source. please shed some light. thanks!

I have tried running linux on ibm mainframe , i had access to as400.. and one of the zseries too .. and yes it does boot in ...although i couldnt get an old sys36 to boot to console ... i guess that might be due to a fault ipl load

salam alaykum
we run os/390 on Amdahl hardware. amdahl is old ibm clone machines now running under fujitsu corporation's support. ibm s/390 and zSeries machines are out of our league at the moment, so we are trying to run a linux version (7.2?) on Amdahl machine (16 engines). suSE 8.2 seems really good compare to redhat's funky support when it comes to mainframe. also, turbo linux is out there too, but i am not too familiar w/ that.